CHASING THE LIGHT! ALL FOR NAUGHT! (for the most part)

Yesterday a buddy and I took a road trip in search of fall colors, and 12 hours and 520 miles later I’ve got NOTHING to show for it! I guess several things led up to it. I started the morning at Discount Tire after finding a bolt sticking out of my front tire, but the guys there fixed me up great and for free. They’re going to get my business for life. We got a late start and didn’t leave the Valley till 11 a.m. Then we decided to take the long way (scenic route) up to the Alpine/Hannagan Meadows area by going through Safford, then taking State Route 191(Coronado Trail) up through Clifton & Morenci. I’ll tell ya, it’s an extremely beautiful drive but don’t take it if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere. And as you go through Clifton & Morenci you can’t miss the mining that’s going on there. It’s incredible.

As we drove 20 mph along the Coronado Trail we saw some nice fall colors, but they were limited as they were scattered along mountainsides. As we headed north, the sun played games with us, giving us beautiful light at times until we’d pull over to shoot what we were witnessing. Pulling the cameras out was the worst thing we could do: As soon as we did, the clouds would skip in front of the sun, losing the light that danced off the leaves. If we would have had more time we would have been more patient and waited for it to come back out. But we were running out of light & time. We were headed for Forest Road 249 and the Big Lake area just northeast of Alpine, but 6 ½ hours after we left the Valley, we arrived too late. The sun had dipped behind the mountain, and the clouds muted the sun, the fall colors were there, but they were flat. Nothing popped, so were we kinda bummed. We waited for a nice sunset with the clouds over the mountain but that didn’t even happen. Just one of those days, but that’s OK. It was a nice drive, the weather was fantastic, and to top it off, I saw a raccoon in the wild. That made my day. I guess something had to.